Yippeeee - another trip begins :o) Flying out of Heathrow today!!!

Arrived OK at 12.30am (although my brain was still in English time so it was really 6.30am!!), hostel seems nice, all private rooms, no dorms, so I went straight to bed in my single room with en-suite and TV!!

Friday 12th - Woke up at around 6am (brain now thinks its midday!?!), couldnt go back to sleep so lazed around until a decent hour and then went to see what happens in Antigua. Quite a nice city - feels more like a town than a city. No high rise buildings, just brightly coloured plastered buildings housing a zillion touristy shops and travel companies.I went for my first Guatemalan breakfast which included plantain, refried beans, cheese, eggs and chillie sauce!
 

It only took a couple of hours to take a wander around and see the various churches, markets and discover the MacDonalds, Burger King and Subway - booooo hissss!! Doesn't seem to be much to do here really, lots of people just seem to spend their day chillin' out in the main square, which is a pretty cool place, so I booked up to go climb Volcano Pacaya in the afternoon :o)

I was picked up fromt the hostel by a clapped out old mini-bus and we headed for the volcano which is around a 45minute drive from Antigua towards Guatemala City. About 20minutes into the journey heaps of smoke started billowing from the engine!! Everyone jumped out of the van and the driver had a quick look underneath, wiped a bit of oil away with a tissue and told everyone to get back in...even though it was still smokin' like a steamtrain!! The Canadians refused to get back in and an arguement ensued between them and the driver and a crowd started forming....then a fire truck arrived!! We'd stopped in a small village and someone had called them - it was starting to become a bit of a comedy scene by this stage!!

Anyway, we eventually set off again, the Canadians were pursuaded to get back in by the promise that the fireman would follow us...which he did for 5 minutes then disappeared!! ha ha
So we did eventually manage to climb the volcano. On the way up the view was stunning. We could see another active volcano puffing away in the distance as well as a couple of dead ones.



It was still daylight when we reached the lava and as the sun set it got really really cold up there, but the glow of the lava was amazing and kept eveyone warm! It was so hot, you couldn't get too close - some people brought marsh mallows to toast, but unless you'd bought a 6ft stick, there was no way you could get close enough to toast them!! The lava really was incredible to see, moving down the mountain. It sounded really quite bizarre too - it made a kind of clinking, cracking sound.
We decended by torchlight and headed back to Antigua at around 8pm. I bought a sandwich for dinner, went back to my room, watched a bit of telly and went to bed, still struggling with a screwed-up body clock!!  

Saturday 13th - Got up early again....caught a bus to Panajachel (can't spell it, can't say it!!) at 12.30pm, well it was supposed to be 12.30pm, it actually left at around 1.30pm!!!

I met Adrian, a nice Aussi fella, on the bus so we went on a hostel hunt together and got a room at the Santander rooms. We asked for a dorm and ended up with a twin room!! - well, we'd known each other at least 2 hours at this point so we were old buddies by travellers standards!! The room was pretty basic, and there was no hot water in the dribbly shower but for only 35Q (around 3 squid) per night you cant complain!!! The weather is definitely hot enough to cope with a cold shower :o)

We dumped our bags and went for a wander around the town and had a look at lake Atitlan. The town is really just one main street with the lake at one end and a kind of town square at the other. In the town square there was a kids party going on and they were whacking a pinata. We stayed to watch the chaos when the sweets all fell out and the kids went crazy!!


Lake Atitlan is supposed to be one of the most beautiful lakes in the world. It is pretty nice with the volcanos around it, but it's not a patch on Lake Titicaca!! There is a serious lack of bars, cafes, or really anything actually on the lake, so there's nowhere to sit and watch the sunset. It seems a bit weird that noone has built anything like that in Panajachel considering the whole of the rest of the town is totally tourist orientated, consisting almost entirely of touristy shops and restaurants.
 
Adrian and I then spent the evening drinking a cheap nasty vodka called Botran at the ´Pana Rock Cafe´ (a total rip-off of the Hard Rock cafe). There was a live band playing and the Guatamalan's were dancing on the tables!!!




Sunday 14th - I went for breakfast with Adrian (which included the worst cup of coffee have ever had!!!) and then he went to catch the bus back to Antigua and I took a taxi (in Panajachel all the taxis are golf carts!) to the nature reserve to find some monkeys....there were lots of spider monkeys so I watched them for a while and got totally munched on by sand flies. Then I went for a wander along the nature trail, checked out the waterfall etc and then lazed about on their private beach by the lake :o) The weather was just beautiful - so nice to be in shorts in December!!



I booked a ticket to Rio Dulce for the next day for 165Q (around 15quid)
I had a late lunch in town and got chatting to a Guatemalan fella called Tony, in really bad Spanglish!! I met him later for dinner and went to bed at 9ish - not feeling so well after the Botran!! ha ha

Monday 15th - I took a bus back to Antigua at 10am which took around 2 hours, then waited around in Antigua til 1pm before getting another shuttle bus to Guatemala City. I was supposed to arrive in Guatemala City in time to meet a 3pm bus to Rio Dulce, but the shuttle bus ended up driving around Antigua for an hour picking people up, then dropped people at the airport, picked up random people in the street before hitting the carnage that is Guatemala City. By the way I cant do apostrophes on this computer - no clue how to make that button work!! Guatemala City is a bit smelly and scruffy and the roads are total chaos so Im really glad just had a bit of a tour of it on the bus and didnt bother actually going there!!

I got to the bus station just before 4pm desperately needing a wee. The downside of travelling on your own is that needing a wee whilst in possession of your big rucksack becomes a bit of a problem - its not wise to leave it unattended, but you also dont want to drag it into a swamp-like excuse for a toilet either. The upside is that it often serves as the ice-breaker with other gringos....soo I made friends with a really nice family from Grimsby at the bus station. They looked after my bag whilst I went to wee and then I went with them to Rio Dulce!!
They had sensibly booked accommodation before going there, I on the other hand was planning to wing it...generally not a problem, but on this occasion the bus was delayed by roadworks and we didn't get to our destination until 11pm. So I went with my new friends to the Hacienda Tijax who fortunately had a bed for me :o)
What a great place - wooden lodgings in the jungle with a swimming pool - nice!!